The white-hot screenwriter with a taste for lethal pets

Where are you at the moment?

I’m in Connecticut, working on The Good Nurse. We’re halfway through the shoot and it’s really exciting. It [stars] Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne, who are great. And it’s from an incredible book by Charles Graeber. Funnily enough, my mum read the first two chapters and she was like, “You’re an idiot if you don’t do this.” I trust her guidance.

Have you now hired your mum as your reader?

Pretty much. She’s on staff, you know? Reader, therapist, dresser, emotional coach.

You’ve had a pretty nuts few years. Oscarnominated for your first script, 1917, cowriting Last Night In Soho with Edgar Wright, cooking up a new Star Wars film with Taika Waititi...

Can I swear? I can? Well, it’s just fucking mental. To use a very Glaswegian term, it’s a wee bit bonkers. I mean, I love writing. And for things to fall this way, I’ve been really lucky. You make up words in your pyjamas — I will or will not confirm that I’m wearing pyjamas now — and then see them come to life. We shot some of Last Night In Soho in a pub I used to work in, and I was back there watching Thomasin Mckenzie act out scenes I had written with Edgar. It’s really good fun. I encourage everyone to try it.

Apparently one of your earliest works of fiction was about killer guinea pigs.

I had a guinea pig at the time that I was sure was plotting my death. And so I wrote this little two-hander about guinea pigs trying to kill their owner. I think it might have suggested that at the time I also worked in a bar and drank a lot. I sat down to write it on Saturday morning and suddenly it was six o’clock and time had disappeared. I was like, “Why had no-one told me this was fun?”

If there is one thing 1917 is missing, it’s killer guinea pigs.

I tried to get some in the trenches, but Sam [Mendes] is a stickler for reality. And I tried on Last Night In Soho. Maybe The Good Nurse will get one in the background.

LAST NIGHT IN SOHO IS IN CINEMAS FROM 29 OCTOBER